Notes: So, this here is what I affectionately calling "Reason Number Two Why Peach Shouldn't Be Allowed To Watch The Empty Hearse When She Has Other Things To Work On". Love to all, Px
Selfless
"I like him," Mary says, smiling at her husband-to-be, but what she actually means is, I'll share you with him.
She's never been a selfless woman, and if she'd met John before he met Sherlock, she'd never even have considered it. Her partner having friends, she would understand, but Sherlock and John have never just been friends. They're… God, Mary has no idea at all what they are, but friends doesn't even come close.
Sherlock doesn't have friends, John told her, after they'd been together three months and she finally plucked up the courage to ask him where he went every Thursday after work (she'd sworn, when she left that life behind, that her days of sneaking around following people were done with, but when it came to John she was damn close to breaking it).
I see, Mary answered, managing to stay silent for a matter of seconds before she had to ask, Were you lovers, then?
No, John said, with the patience of someone who'd heard that question so many times he could no longer muster the energy to be exasperated by it. We just… were.
I see, she said again, though at the time she didn't.
Today, though, when her not-quite-fiancé's best friend (for lack of a better term) has just risen from the dead, Mary sees everything.
It's obvious, now, why John never managed to explain just what he and Sherlock were (and Mary asked more than once). John couldn't explain it, because no one can. Sherlock and John aren't friends, and they weren't lovers, weren't even trapped in some kind of cycle of denied feelings and repressed sexuality. They just are.
Seeing Sherlock – the real, true, not-dead Sherlock – is all Mary needs to know that, no, if John has lied to her (she's kept so many of her own secrets from him that ruling out the possibility altogether seems unwise), it's not about Sherlock.
Mary has never been selfless, but then she's never been in love before, and if sharing her boyfriend with this peculiar, uncomprehending and really rather wonderful man is what it takes to make John grin like he did tonight when he thought no one was looking at him, Mary will share.
"What?" John asks, still fuming, incredibly confused, and far happier than he's been in all the time she's known him, even if he doesn't realise it yet.
"I like him."